“Death of Desire” by Danil Rudoy is a five-part poem from Love Is Poetry. Its movement begins in artistic exhaustion and depression, passes through disillusionment with desire, and reaches a final turn toward romance.
Death of Desire
I
Cracks broke into sculptures,
True poets are dead.
Where are all those vultures
That had to be fed?
Go fetch them with others
And finish the feast:
Depression that smothers
Is also a beast.
II
You’re grimacing? Stop. Let’s
Face that which it seems.
The magical droplets
Don’t fuel your daydreams.
They’re hard to arrange and,
As always, quite sparse:
Too still for a legend,
Too stiff for a farce.
III
Now, who is the demon
Whose touch you adore?
It used to be women,
But not anymore.
No matter how stunning,
No matter how stunned:
The best of the cunning
Is only a cunt.
IV
Did I hear some choking?
At least you’re awake.
You thought I was joking?
You made a mistake.
The life of a poet’s
A ride on a wheel
Between how you know it’s
Right, and how you feel.
V
Enough of the sorrow!
Epiphanies are
Highways to tomorrow,
But where is the car?
I’ll end this quagmire
By watching askance
The death of desire,
The birth of romance.
2013, May 16th 2019
Publication
“Death of Desire” appears in Love Is Poetry: Rhyming Poems About Love Life, in The Heartless Muse.
The final turn
The poem spends four numbered sections dismantling artistic glamour, erotic fixation and the speaker’s own habits of feeling. The fifth section changes direction through the paired phrases “death of desire” and “birth of romance.” The closing rhyme gives the title its decisive transformation.
Critical reading
A detailed critical reading of “Death of Desire” on Prose & Poetry follows the poem’s five-part structure, depression, failed inspiration, wheel metaphor, road imagery, direct address and closing movement from desire toward romance.
Text and citation
Copyright © Danil Rudoy. The poem is published here as the author’s canonical text. Short excerpts may be quoted for criticism, scholarship, teaching and literary discussion with attribution to Danil Rudoy and a link to this page. Full reproduction requires separate permission.